


Ostend

by Garonne



Category: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24254770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garonne/pseuds/Garonne
Summary: Keith and Ewen meet on neutral ground, in an inn on the Flemish coast.
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	Ostend

**Author's Note:**

> Goes AU from the last part of FotH, so that Keith never encountered Lachlan and Ewen on the sands of Morar.
> 
> Many thanks to Luzula for beta-reading!

Ewen bent his head to pass through the door of the inn, bringing a gust of cold night air with him.

The taproom was warm and crowded, the smoke from fish oil lamps and tallow candles wreathing through the air, mingling with the smell of vegetable soup, mussels and wheat beer. Ostend harbour lay a stone's throw away from the inn, and sailors, fishermen and traders had packed into the room.

Ewen caught the landlord's attention and addressed him in French, hoping he would be understood. "Have you a private parlour? We are a party of five gentlemen, here to dine and to sleep for the night."

Young Donald Murray, James McLaren of Kilgarrick, and some of their followers were on the road behind him. They had set off from Rome two weeks earlier, taking ship for Marseille, and travelling hence across land to Ostend, home port of the privateer that was to carry them to Scotland on the morrow. 

Ewen would be in Ardroy by July, and his heart sang for joy every time he remembered that.

"The parlour is through here," the landlord told him. "But there is a gentleman there already, an _Engelsman_."

Ewen was not surprised to hear it. Peace reigned in Europe for the moment, however long that might last, and English merchants and traders had flocked to the Dutch ports. Perhaps this English fellow might even be a Jacobite, and if not, he could hardly have grounds to object to sharing their table at dinner.

"I shall beg the gentleman's leave to disturb him," Ewen told the landlord. He bespoke food and drink for five, and two rooms for the night, and then went through the open door the landlord had indicated.

The private room contained a large table for dining, a few commodes and chairs, and a writing desk in the corner. The room was in darkness save for the candle burning on the desk, lighting the face of the man who sat there, his head bent over his writing.

Ewen stopped dead, his heart clenching in his chest so tight that for a moment he could not breathe. He knew that face in profile. He had last seen it in a dank prison cell in Fort Augustus four years earlier, Keith Windham's eyes bright and lips pressed tightly together in sorrow, Ewen's own fettered hands clasping Keith's as they bid each other farewell.

Now, Major Windham glanced up over his shoulder. "I wonder if I might beg another ink pot of you," he said in passable French. "This one is almost dried up."

Windham had taken him for the landlord, Ewen realised. He stepped forward into the room, so that the candlelight fell on his face.

Keith sprang to his feet. The chair clattered unheeded to the floor behind him, knocked backwards by the violence of his movement.

They both stood frozen for a moment. Then Ewen came forward in two swift steps, as did Keith. They met in the middle of the room and clasped hands, both exclaiming at once.

"Ardroy!" Keith's voice was tinged with the same surprise Ewen felt, and the same warmth.

"Major Windham, how come you here? Here of all places! I can scarcely believe it."

"I am carrying despatches from the British état-major in Liège. I leave for Dover in the morning." He had let Ewen's hand fall, but was still smiling. "I heard you had escaped on the road to Carlisle. I was glad. And then later I heard you had reached the Continent. I was patrolling the Morar coastline, you know. You must have slipped right through my fingers -- as did your Prince," he added, suddenly sounding disgusted. "That was a severe blow. But for yourself, Ardroy, I was glad never to lay hands on you."

This put Ewen in mind of something. "Listen, Windham," he said urgently. "I am travelling with some friends, former comrades-in-arms. They will be here within minutes. I rode ahead to bespeak rooms and dinner."

"Never fear, my duties do not extend to arresting the Pretender's men on Hapsburg soil. Although -- I presume you don't have the Pretender's son himself with you? I had heard he was in Madrid."

Ewen nodded. That was no secret. "I have not seen him since the summer of '47."

He could relax, now, and look at Keith properly. He looked well, his dark features relaxing into a smile that drew Ewen's eye, his eyes tinged with gold where the candlelight caught them. Upon Ewen's arrival he had seemed shaken, but now the first flush of emotion had passed. He was master of himself again.

"And you?" he asked. "I know there is an amnesty of sorts. Are you even now bound for Scotland?"

Ewen nodded. "I will be at Ardroy in less than a month, God willing."

"You will convey my best wishes to Miss Cameron, and to Miss Grant -- or to Mrs Cameron, I presume I must say?"

"Miss Grant is married indeed, but not to me. She lives in the Black Isle now."

"Oh." There was a strange note in Keith's voice, which Ewen did not know how to interpret. Perhaps he was embarrassed, because he felt the question must discountenance Ewen.

In truth it still cost Ewen a pang to speak of Alison, and to think of what might have been, even though the ending of their engagement had been as much his suggestion as hers. Perhaps things might have gone differently if the Rising had not intervened, and they had remained together at Ardroy. Instead, they had both found the other changed by their separation, and their own relationship changed with it.

"I will convey your best wishes to my aunt, of course," Ewen said to fill the silence.

Keith nodded in acknowledgment. He sat back down at the desk, folding up the letter, or report, or whatever he had been writing, and tucking it into his coat pocket. It occurred to Ewen that the contents were probably not fit for Jacobite eyes.

"You dine here tonight then?" asked Keith abruptly.

Ewen had already said as much, but he was not surprised by the question. He too felt unsettled and thrown off balance by this unexpected meeting, and if Keith seemed to be speaking almost at random, Ewen could forgive him for it because he felt the same.

"Yes," he answered. "I hope you will dine with us."

Keith nodded again.

The room fell silent. The only noise came from the distant taproom, and the port outside, where the wind in the rigging and the creaking of masts whispered across the harbour. Tomorrow Ewen would board a ship bound for Scotland, leaving Keith here behind him, most probably never to meet him again. A heavy weight settled on his chest at the thought.

Beyond the window, the lights and lanterns on the innumerable ships in the harbour winked and glowed in the dark, and moonlight glinted on the sea beyond. A sudden thought occurred to Ewen.

"Angus did say our fifth and last meeting would be by water." He glanced at Keith, still sitting at the desk, his head bowed. "And although Fort Augustus is by water too, I knew -- I hoped -- it could not be our last."

Keith made a harsh noise of protest in his throat.

Ewen smiled faintly, though without joy. "Are you still so sceptical? Even now, after fate has brought us together in this most unlikely place?"

"I am not sceptical, exactly. But rather -- " He glanced up at Ewen, and a somberness seemed to lie over his face, his jaw set tightly. " -- unwilling to accept that this meeting tonight should be our last."

Something in his voice struck straight at Ewen's heart. "Oh."

His heart had sped up, the pressure in his chest suddenly an almost physical pain. When he had last seen Keith, in that dungeon room in Fort Augustus, he had thought he was soon to give up everything: his freedom and his life. His heart had ached with regret for a friendship that could have been and never would be, but he had been able to part from Keith with a resignation that was part of the peace he had made with his own imminent death.

Now he was alive, with all his future ahead of him, and fate had brought them together again.

Keith sat looking at him in silence. The candle was behind him, and his expression in the shadows seemed to be wary, watchful, waiting. Ewen had the impression of something intangible slipping through his fingers, and he wanted to grasp at it, to clutch it to him and guard it preciously.

"Windham -- " he began.

Then the door opened, and Kilgarrick, Murray and the others were crowding into the small parlour.

"Ewen!" cried Kilgarrick. "We are starved with the hunger, and chilled to the bone -- " He stopped short, seeing Keith in his uniform.

Ewen made the introductions, and they greeted Keith with the same civility he showed them in return. The landlord arrived immediately with the first dishes, and they dined on fresh fish and mussels, followed by quails, and washed down with French wine. Throughout dinner they managed to converse on neutral topics, far removed from war or rebellion. The conversation sometimes veered towards dangerous ground, generally through Murray's unwary words, but Kilgarrick always steered them back to safety. Ewen spoke little, but his gaze was on Keith, who kept up his end of the conversation with courtesy and aplomb.

After the meal they all drank a glass of brandy together, and then Keith rose to his feet.

"I'll leave you now, gentlemen. I bid you farewell, and a fair journey."

He sketched a bow and a nod to the room at large, his gaze lingering a moment on Ewen, and then withdrew.

Ewen sat frozen for a moment, the brandy turning sour in his mouth.

He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He made his excuses, hardly caring what the others thought, and hurried from the room.

The corridor outside led to the taproom on one side and a flight of stairs to the upper floor on the other. Keith was half way up the stairs. 

"Windham!" 

Keith stopped and turned, as Ewen came hurrying up the stairs after him. When he reached Keith he stopped short, suddenly realising he had no idea what he meant to say.

But Keith was not looking at him in surprise or enquiry. Instead he seemed... relieved, perhaps.

"Ardroy," he began, but broke off to let a serving girl carrying a jug pass them on the stairs. No sooner had she disappeared than an elderly gentleman appeared, one of the inn's guests, squeezing past them on the way down to the ground floor. The stairwell echoed with noise from the taproom below, and doors were opening and closing on the landing above. 

Keith made an exasperated noise. "I am sharing my room here with a pair of Dutch textile merchants."

And Ewen, of course, was sharing with a group of Jacobites.

They exchanged a wordless glance, then both turned to go back downstairs and out a side door into the night.

The inn stood with several other similar establishments facing the harbour. At this hour of night the commercial business of the day was over, but people were coming and going in pairs and small groups between the inns, the ship's boats moored at the quayside, and the street that led into the town.

Ewen crossed the street with Keith at his side, making for the far end of the waterfront where, in daylight hours, the storehouses and the harbour foundry plied their trade. The area was deserted now. Ewen leant his elbows on the wide stone wall that separated them from the quayside, looking down to the hewn-stone pier, and beyond that the calm black water of the harbour. The cool night breeze coming off the land ruffled his hair and sounded gently in the rigging of the boats. Beside him, Keith too leant on the wall, shoulder-to-shoulder with Ewen. He was looking out into the harbour, and he did not speak.

"I could not say goodbye to you so brutally," said Ewen in a low voice.

He glanced sideways at Keith, who did not turn to him, but bent his head to look down at his hands where they lay clasped on the wall. They stood in near darkness, in the shadows of the foundry, and Ewen could not see his face. 

"Neither could I," said Keith softly.

Ewen's throat closed up over the mix of hope and doubt warring in his breast. He had already said everything he could say, and there was still so much he could not say. So much that was impossible to say.

"I should go," said Keith, abruptly straightening up from the wall. Ewen straightened too, the breath knocked out of him, as though he had received a blow to the gut. Keith went on, "I... am glad to have seen you again, and looking so well." He reached out and gripped Ewen's arm. "Farewell, Ardroy."

But he did not move away, and they stood facing one another, Keith's hand on Ewen's arm. After a moment Ewen laid his own hand over Keith's. His skin was warm under Ewen's, as everything in Ewen seemed to shift and recentre around that single touch.

Then Keith jerked Ewen closer, into a tight embrace. They pressed together, the buttons of Keith's coat hard against Ewen's chest, and Keith's arms tight around him, as he held Keith to him just as tightly. His heart beat fiercely with the joy of an unexpected, unlooked-for gift, filling the hole he had hardly known was there.

He felt Keith's lips on his temple, the merest brush, and turned his head. His mouth met Keith's, and he felt the shiver that ran through Keith at that soft touch.

They stumbled further into the deep shadows of the foundry, clinging to each other. Keith's hands were in Ewen's hair, stroking and caressing, and Ewen kissed him again, pouring his love and fear and joy into the contact: joy at finding Keith again -- love that he had tamped down over the years -- fear of losing Keith again, so soon after finding him.

When finally they broke the kiss, they stayed close, their foreheads pressed together.

"Your companions will be wondering what has become of you," said Keith hoarsely.

Ewen shook his head in dismissal. That was not important now. He reached for Keith's hand, holding it in his own. "I leave at dawn tomorrow. We will not see each other again, I think. Not here." He wished for a second, wildly, that he might stay here and let the others go on ahead, but he knew Keith was under orders and would not dally in Ostend. "Will you come to me at Ardroy, when you can?"

Keith tightened his grasp on Ewen's hand. "Yes. Yes, of course. But I don't know how many months or years -- "

"I know." Ewen's heart clenched at the thought. "However many months or years we must wait."

"At Ardroy," whispered Keith, and he sounded like he was clinging to the idea as desperately as Ewen was.

"At Ardroy. God grant you may come swiftly and safely."

He felt Keith's arms come around him again, and they stayed together for a long time in the shadow of the foundry.


End file.
